Contact centres provide an interface between an organisation and users of that organisation, such as between a business and its customers. Contacts of various media types (such as telephone calls, chat sessions, instant messaging sessions, video calls or emails) can be initiated either by the user or by the contact centre, but are most commonly initiated by a user. In many cases a contact is queued until an agent having the required skillset to deal with the contact is free. During this time the call will be put on hold or the chat session will enter a wait mode, for example, or an email will simply be submitted to a contact's address and the user simply awaits a reply.
Certain contact centre systems can provide a user with feedback while they are holding for an agent. For example, a user hears a recorded message providing a status update, such as the position of the contact within a queue or the expected wait time until an agent will be free. Such information is necessarily limited, and the user has little control over the contact other than to hang up. Sometimes the user can also choose to leave a message before hanging up.
Alternative methods have been proposed to provide contact centre users with enhanced information and services. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/572,384, filed May 16, 2000 (assigned to Nortel Networks Limited) discloses an interactive response system for use with display phones in which the user can select responses to prompts on a visual display (as an alternative to a standard interactive voice response mechanism), thereby assisting in more accurately queuing the contact.
A problem with current contact centre technology is that apart from information such as expected wait time or queue position (which is not always available), users or customers frequently find that their contact enters a hold or waiting state and if the contact is not dealt with speedily the user may lose patience and hang up or disconnect, in which case the contact is effectively dropped from the system.
Furthermore, it is a common occurrence that a user will previously have made contact with the contact centre and will wish to speak with the specific agent who handled the previous contact. In such cases, the user often has little option but to wait until the new contact reaches the top of the queue, and then asks for the particular agent who dealt with the previous contact. The user then has to hold again until that agent is free. While it is possible for an agent to provide a direct dial number for use in follow up contacts from a customer, such calls are usually routed direct to the agent and do not enter the reporting and statistics of the contact centre. The agent then appears to be idle or to be on a personal call when in fact he or she is dealing with a repeat customer, and the final resolution of the customer's query may not be reflected in the statistics for the contact centre.